'Flyin' West' is eager to stretch its wings

March 19, 2007|By Kerry Reid, Special to the Tribune

Pearl Cleage is enjoying a local mini-festival, with productions opening this last weekend of the Atlanta-based writer's "Blues for an Alabama Sky" (the first in Eclipse Theatre Company's all-Cleage season) and 1992's "Flyin' West," now onstage at Court Theatre under the direction of Ron OJ Parson.

Though the setting of Cleage's frontier drama is a prairie homestead circa 1898, there's nothing fusty or dusty about this unabashedly uplifting tale that serves as a tribute to the power of independent black women and the importance of community. Cleage gets her points across without bombast or long stretches of solemn speechifying. The story's outlines have echoes of classic melodrama, including a plot to steal a virtuous woman's land, but Cleage anchors the tale with heart, wit and sass well-matched by Parson's invigorating pace and a cast ranging from solid to stellar. Jack Magaw's homespun set and the rich all-encompassing sunsets created by Kathy A. Perkins' lighting design create an environment that is cozy but with hints of vastness just beyond the horizon.

Unlike Chekhov (or the usual narrative of African-Americans' northern migration), the three sisters in this story have no yearnings for the big city. In fact, they left Memphis for all-black Nicodemus, Kansas, to avoid the racial violence of Reconstruction and to gain "something free and fine and all our own," as the gun-toting Sophie puts it. Sophie (the fearsomely funny TaRon Patton) now shares the house with sweet-natured Fannie (Tyla Abercrumbie) and their neighbor, Miss Leah (vinegary Cheryl Lynn Bruce), a former slave who lost all her children but not her spirit or her stories.

The youngest sister, Minnie (Monet Butler) returns for a visit after living in London with her husband, Frank (Brandon Miller) an emerging poet who can "pass" as white -- and whose pathological self-loathing sets in motion the story's well-oiled mechanisms. (Of course, it's difficult to hear debates about whether or not a mixed-race man can fully identify with the black community without thinking of the scrutiny being faced by a certain presidential candidate from Court's Hyde Park neighborhood.)

Like Alice Walker, Cleage doesn't cut black men any slack for domestic abuse, though the oily viciousness of Frank is balanced here by the stolid goodness of Wil (Greg Hollimon), a well-traveled bachelor with designs on Fannie. It's interesting that someone as masterful with the written word as Cleage can create characters so suspicious of writers. Miss Leah responds to Fannie's repeated requests to allow her to write down her memories of slave life with "these aren't writin' stories. They're tellin' stories." And in the end, it's a particular bit of inherited domestic lore that sets Minnie free.